


Glasses

by 401



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bruce Is a Good Bro, Fluff, Glasses, M/M, bucky cant see, eye test, fluff?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-13 08:04:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4514310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/401/pseuds/401
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve notices that Bucky is struggling to read.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Blur

**Author's Note:**

> meh

Steve stood in the doorway of the rec room at SHIELD. Bucky was sitting on the couch, legs crossed wearing torn jeans, odd socks and one of Steve’s t-shirts. He was holding a copy of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ in both hands, but it did not look like he was reading it. He was just moving it to and from his face, squinting in frustration.

“You alright there, Buck?” Steve nearly chuckled at the effort Bucky was putting in, but he stopped himself.

Bucky nodded slowly, not looking away from the pages.

“The print’s small on this one, that’s all,” Bucky’s cheeks seemed to colour slightly, but Steve couldn’t be sure.

Steve sat down next to Bucky on the couch and read over his shoulder. The print really was not that small. It was pretty standard for a book that size and the text was bold.

“Buck, it’s pretty big font,” Steve patted the soldier’s knee absently, “Are you okay?”

Steve treated the situation with kid gloves. Bucky had a habit of getting disproportionately embarrassed when he fell short at anything. Steve knew that it was because of his time with HYDRA, when failure at a mission would lead to punishment, humiliation and torture. Now, there were no missions and Bucky would feel the same kind of anxiety around failing everyday tasks. Something as small as forgetting to close the fridge would leave Bucky mortified on a bad day.

“I’m fine,” Bucky murmured, “I’m just tired.”

Steve stayed where he was and watched Bucky read, attempt to anyway. His index finger on his right hand would trace the lines and little by little, his face would inch closer and closer to the page in an effort to clarify the words. Steve had no memory of Bucky having an issue with this sort of thing before the war, but then again, Bucky had never been much of a reader back then. That was Steve’s thing. It was clearly an issue now though.

“Hey,” Steve stood up, offering Bucky a hand, “I wanna’ try something with you.”

Bucky stood up and followed Steve’s lead, out of the room and down the hallway.

“Where are we going?” Bucky tightened his grip on Steve’s forearm a little as they paced down one of the blue lit, plastic smelling hallways of SHIELD’s expansive headquarters.

“Dr Banner,” Steve stated calmly.

Steve’s calm did nothing and Bucky dug his heels into the ground.

“No,” Bucky went to turn away.

Steve caught him by the shoulders and stroked his arms up and down.

“You like Bruce, you always have,” Steve sighed.

Bucky was generally averted to any form of medical attention. He hadn’t dealt with injections very well, even before HYDRA, let alone now. Steve remembered taking Bucky to the dentist when they were seventeen. It had taken three days of not being able to chew on his left side and all of Steve’s persuasive skills. In the end, Steve had to get him absolutely legless on cheap liquor to even push him past the threshold of the waiting room. He had needed two fillings and a root canal. And a hug afterwards.

“What’s he going to do?” Bucky asked frowning, still suspicious.

Steve put an arm around Bucky’s waist and continued to guide him down the hall.

“An ophthalmology exam,” Steve announced in air quotes, “He’s going to shine a few lights in your eyes to see how good your vision is.”

Bucky considered the situation.

“Shouldn’t the serum have sorted out my vision?”

Steve shrugged, weighing it up. It could have, but then again, years in a dim bunker subjected to experiment after experiment that even SHIELD didn’t know the full extent of could have thrown Bucky’s eyesight in the opposite direction entirely.

“Just give it a go for me,” Steve kissed Bucky on the forehead before walking into Banner’s office.

“Hey, Cap,” Bruce did not look up from whatever gadget he was tinkering with, “What can I do for you this fine, emergency-free morning?”

Steve put his coat down on one of the stools that dotted the laboratory.

“Can you give Buck an eye test for me, please?” Steve asked.

Banner looked up, he had not noticed Bucky. The man sure walked like an assassin.

“Oh sure!” Dr Banner slid a chair out, “Take a seat, Sgt Barnes.”

Bucky glanced at Steve for reassurance. Steve nodded and nudged him in the direction of the chair. Bucky sat down.

“I’m gonna set up some slides over there, and I’ll put different lenses in front of your eyes to see if you can see the letters,” Bruce explained.

Bucky relaxed a little at the certainty of the plan ahead of him. Bruce jogged over to the centre of the room, fiddled through a couple of drawers before pulling out a tiny blue box. He switched it on and instantly, it shot out a projection of differently sized letters, hovering suspended in blue light. It was very different from what Bucky had expected when Bruce had said ‘slides’.

“Tell me if you’re uncomfortable, or you just want to stop outright,” Bruce instructed.

Bucky nodded and tilted his chin up as Dr Banner secured a pair of lenses over his eyes. Bucky flinched away from the proximity and cold of the plastic. Steve squeezed his hand reassuringly.

“Okay, left,” Bruce flicked a thin glass filter over the left side of the lenses, “Or right.”

Bucky squinted, closing and opening both eyes intermittently.

“Left, still kind of fuzzy though,”

Bruce nodded and switched lenses, over and over until the scribbles of numbers in the notebook on Bruce’s knee came to a conclusion.

“You, Sergeant Bucky Barnes, need some glasses,” Bruce announced, clapping his hands together, “Pretty badly too.”  


Bucky sighed, more worried about the situation than he probably should be. He had been trusted to be a sniper for years. The thought of him having that power without 100% accuracy behind him made him shudder. What if the times he had failed missions in the past could have been avoided by a simple pair of contacts? What if he could have been tortured just a little less?

“You alright?” Bruce went to put a hand on Bucky’s shoulder, but paused in mid- air.

“Mmhm, I’m okay,” Bucky shook the nostalgia from his mind, “Thanks, doctor.”

Bruce gave a shallow bow and pulled out a pair of navy blue plastic frames from the same drawer as the projector had come.

“Come back in…an hour or so and I’ll have these set up for you,” Bruce said, twisting one of the screws at the side of the glasses, “I’ll reinforce the glass so you won’t break them and I’ll get the biometrics lab to sort you out some contact lenses, for combat and stuff.”

Bucky raised his eyebrows, surprised and grateful at the amount of effort and care going into all this. He was not used to this much consideration being taken over his health, especially something as minor as his eyesight.

Steve thanked Bruce again and they left the lab arm in arm.

“So, excited?” Steve squeezed Bucky’s bicep, feeling the resistance of metal under his sleeve. He had to remind himself that Bucky couldn’t actually feel it if he did that.

“Yeah, I kind of am,” Bucky admitted.


	2. Focus

“Right on time,” Bruce chucked a cylindrical, silver case in Bucky’s direction. He caught it. It was lighter than he had imagined.

“Give them a try, babe,” Steve put a hand on Bucky’s shoulder as his metal fingers set to work nimbly opening the little latches of the glasses case. Bucky took out the glasses and held the up. They were similar to the ones he had seen Tony wear.

Bucky slid the plastic frames onto his face with his eyes closed. A small gasp escaped his lips when he opened them as the room around him was plunged into absolute clarity. He started to notice things on tables that he had not picked up on that morning. He realised that Steve’s t-shirt had a small SHEILD logo on the left shoulder. Bruce looked different, he couldn’t place it but he did all the same. Bucky paused and turned to Steve, his heart suddenly pumping in his chest far too fast.

“How does it look?” Steve asked gesturing to the room around him.

Bucky shook his head, still staring at Steve.

His eyes were bluer than Bucky had thought, and something about that sharpness shot him back seventy years in two seconds. Light caught on the smooth gold of Steve’s hair, showing more colours in it than Bucky had expected and details like the couple of freckles on the bridge of Steve’s nose and a small scar on his forehead came into focus.

“Beautiful, it looks beautiful,” Bucky murmured, eyes unmoving from Steve’s face.

Steve grinned at the surprise on the soldier’s face. Seeing Bucky wearing glasses was odd in itself. He looked adorable, undeniably, sliding the glasses up his nose, but there was something deeper than that, the fact he was wearing casual clothing added to it. He looked very…civilian, in a way that Steve had not seen in a while. Steve took a breath to steady himself.

“Well come on then,” Steve took Bucky by the hand once more, “Let’s go and see the world.”

 


End file.
